[KenWittlief]

reading this thread again, it has just occurred to me, a camcorder looking down from the ceiling will track where the player is on the court all the time, all by itself

all you have to do is look at the live video screen, or play the tape back, and the player himself will move across your monitor exactly the same way he moved around the basketball court. "There he is, there he is...."

This almost sounds silly when presented this way, but it brings out an issue with your original question. You have jumped into the middle of the engineering design cycle with this thread, and asked for help with the HOW part: How to design a tracking system

but you never told us the WHY part (the problem you are trying to solve, which will explain WHY this is needed) and the WHAT part (what the system is required to do to solve that problem).

The more you explain the WHY and the WHAT, the better we will be able to brainstorm the HOW.

An off the shelf video camera will track a basketball player on the court through the whole game, with a graphical representation of his X,Y position. Is that all you need? I get the feeling there must be more to the problem you are trying to solve.